Acetaia ItaliaRaspberry Pearls, 50 gr

Ideal to add to sauces, salads , it has a slight sweet taste and lovely on tomatoes. It’s not a thick balsamic condiment but then I don’t think it’s intended to be. A must for your store cupboard.

Opted for this because my subscription usual balsamic wasn't available and Amazon suggested it.Unfortunately it's not a patch on the usual brand I get. This is thin and vinegary. OK for cooking but no good for dipping and not great for dressings, it's just too bitter.More expensive than what I usually get too.

My first bottle arrived today and I had to have a taste. So very glad I purchased it. It’s mellow, full rounded flavour is just perfect. I'm ordering another bottle now as I don’t want to be without. Looking forward to my lunchtime salad drizzled with this.

Arrived fast,well packed, no fuss, all good. So tasty, wanting to cook with it with everything.

I can't claim to be a professional on upper end balsamic vinegars, this product offers a standard and quality I thought you would have to payed a lot more for. Will see myself returning to purchase more once I quickly make my way through this.

The best ever

Ideal for salads but also for some flavour on vegetables

I got quite into balsamic vinegars a few years back when I fell in love with the flavour and fell down a bit of a rabbit hole in search of 'the one'. The world of balsamic vinegars is actually pretty deep, and I'll go into it briefly here so you can get a better context for this review, but if you prefer to skip it, you could jump to the second paragraph. For anyone curious, I'll be as brief as possible, but basically there is three tiers of proper balsamic vinegars, DOP, Condimento and IGP. DOP are traditional vinegars, the artisnal stuff, aged for an indeterminate amount of time and certified as traditional. These are running you at minimum £50+ but you can easily expect to pay up to £200. Realistically, you'd only use this in a dish where teh balsamic vinegar is the star of the show. Next you have Condimento, which is your high end Supermarket or Department Store vinegars, often gift packaged and are usually aged for a minimum of three years. If they're certified, then they have to have been made in Modena and are often produced by recognised traditional makers. At the bottom of the tree is IGP, which are really your high end supermarket vinegars, aged minimum of three months and of good quality still, but aimed to be mass produced and usually add wine vinegar to the ingredients to raise acidity. Honestly speaking, the first two grades don't vary that much in quality, due to the high standards for certification. It's always going to be good, you're really just dealing in subtle nuances of flavour. IGP, however, can vary greatly and that's where reviews come in handy, such as this one! This is an IGP vinegar and I think it's actually quite a well priced IGP.First and foremost when dealing with IGP vinegars, you want to check the ingredients, really duff vinegars will have wine vinegar as the top ingredient and include colourants and dyes. Thankfully, this bottle has grape must listed as the top ingredient with wine vinegar second and no other ingredients whatsoever, so in terms of ingredients, this is probably the middle to top end of IGP. Sadly we're never treated to the exact percentage of grape must to wine vinegars, but we at least know grape must is the majority ingredient here. TO determine anything else, you have to instead observe the vinegar itself. a good IGP will be thicker than a bad one and coat the bottle or glass when you swill it about, as this one does, so once again we're kind of in good territory here. Its also nice and dark and actually, has a wonderful smell, not overly acidic and sharp but deep and slightly woody with some sweetness. The flavour is lovely actually used liberally in salad dressings and soups is basically just what you want. Being on teh darker side, it's definitely sweeter than your cheap vinegars and would make a great marinade or even if you want to give it a bash, drizzled on strawberries and ice creams, though probably you'll only get a touch of the amazing flavours from something a bit more high end. For the price point, I think this is actually a really nice vinegar.As for the product itself, balsamic vinegars will keep forever, but for those that quibble, the printed best before on my bottle is 2030, so plenty of time to get through a bottle. The presentation lacks a little bit, it basically came wrapped in a little bubble wrap and otherwise, it's just the bottle itself. A lot of vinegars around this price range come in nice giftable boxes etc. So I think if you're looking for a gift, there are more attractive options out there. If you're looking to buy a decent quality vinegar for yourself however, I think this is of great quality and you could do much worse. Definitely I think this is on the higher end of the IGP scale!